JOURNAL ARTICLE

Fugitive Poem: Bharat Bhawan Archive, Bhopal Gas Tragedy, and World Poetry.

  • Published In: English: The Journal of the English Association, 2025, v. 74, n. 284. P. 60 1 of 3

  • Database: Humanities Source Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Mukim, Mantra 3 of 3

Abstract

This article analyzes five intermedial poetry documents from the Vagarth poetry archive at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal, submitted by poets Arun Kolatkar (India), Nicanor Parra (Chile), Miroslav Holub (Czechoslovakia), Vasko Popa (Yugoslavia), and Gabriel Okara (Nigeria) during the 1989 World Poetry Festival. The Festival, held in Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) India shortly after the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster, embodied tensions between Cold War geopolitics, postcolonial cultural aspirations, and local social crises, as reflected in both the archival materials and concurrent protests. The article situates these poetic works and their accompanying drawings as expressions of fugitivity and asymmetry, resisting fixed national or ideological affiliations while engaging with the complexities of "world poetry" as a category shaped by uneven global power relations. The archive and the Festival's setting highlight the fraught interplay between aesthetics, politics, and historical trauma in a moment of global and local contestation.

Additional Information

  • Source:English: The Journal of the English Association. 2025/03, Vol. 74, Issue 284, p60
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Library and Information Science
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:00138215
  • DOI:10.1093/english/efaf016
  • Accession Number:190553985
  • Copyright Statement:Copyright of English: The Journal of the English Association is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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